curator(s): Iara Boubnova, Enrico Lunghi

Joy can be broached as liberating and ground-breaking energy. Instead of looking for it elsewhere, in expectation of the here-after, or in the illusory pleasures of consumerism, it can be situated within ourselves. It is thus independent of external causes and enables us to experience the happiness of the present moment. Making a small place in the sun for yourself by making a hole in a cloud (John Körmeling), or singing in your bathtub despite your loneliness (Stefan Nikolaev) are ways of dealing with life while recognising its tragic, absurd and fatal factors. So the works of Tsui Kuang-Yu (Eighteen Copper Guardians in Shao-Lin Temple and Penetration), Werner Reiterer (Beginnings of Space Travel), the sculptures of Peter Sauerer, Erwin Wurm and the dancing stick of Thierry Mouillé broach with merry wit the boundaries that we try in vain to go beyond, and the human condition which we cannot escape from. Joy, which is lucid and aware of death, thus gives us the strength to thoroughly sample life.

Our cultural tradition tends to darken any experience of joy with a sense of guilt. In her film Ever is Over All, Pipilotti Rist expresses, with a certain nonchalance and lightness, a "joie de vivre" that is beyond all morality and guilt. Joy thus supplies the strength needed for living with a certain casualness, free of outward conditions, in a state akin to childhood. Jill Mercedes out-lines in neon a drawing from her adolescence, in the form of a star with the colours of the rainbow; the colourful floral motifs of Michael Lin's wallpapers joyously fill the walls of the exhibition space; Rostan Tavasiev recreates a world coming from a dream; lastly, the lights and sparkling reflections in the works of Sturtevant, Peter Kogler and Koo-Jeong-A project us into an almost festive ambience. The overflowing energy which comes across in the act of creation seems ubiquitous in the installations of Honoré d'O. His installations - just like Vadim Fishkin's Snow-Show and Martin Creed's Work no.262 - will certainly delight more than one visitor, for whom this confrontation with art will also turn out to be a joyous act. Last of all, joy in art can be situated just as much in the creator as in the receiver.